A di­ver­sion from mis­sion

Sadly, it looks like the Church of Eng­land faces years of de­bil­i­tat­ing de­bate on the is­sue of same-sex mar­riage with the re­cent an­nounce­ment of so-called ‘fa­cil­i­tated con­ver­sa­tion’. These set-piece con­cil­i­a­tion ex­er­cises will have lit­tle or no rel­e­vance to the busi­ness of par­ish churches up and down the land and will be of pass­ing in­ter­est to the vast ma­jor­ity of Angli­cans. The Bish­ops have said that the ‘con­ver­sa­tions’ have no pre­de­ter­mined out­come and are merely aimed at hav­ing ‘good dis­agree­ment’.

‘Good dis­agree­ment’ is about agree­ing to dif­fer and mov­ing the con­ver­sa­tion on to some other sub­ject. So please, when we’ve done with ‘fa­cil­i­tated con­ver­sa­tions’ can we have a mora­to­rium on the sub­ject?

With that in mind, I prom­ise to keep the sub­ject out of my col­umns for as long as I can – at least un­til some fur­ther ma­jor con­tro­versy crops up.